Hump Day Headline

For the bacon-obsessed, a camp in Michigan has the cure

Yes, you read that correctly. Bacon camp. It's like band camp, but with bacon.

People are driving thousands of miles to Wisonsin to experience the "thinking person's bacon camp". The camp's founders agree with my assertion that the proliferation of bacon has jumped the shark and want true lovers of bacon to embrace the purity of the food.

With goals like "get people off the 'I love bacon' thing" and "rechannel bacon enthusiasm" the camp encourages aficianados to understand how bacon is made, the differences in cuts and preparation styles and the optimal cooking procedures.

Is this the answer to bacon having "jumped the shark"? Is elevating bacon to a higher art the way to get it out of every bandage wrapper and novelty store? Would you go to Camp Bacon?

Discuss in the comments!



Banner Ads! Press Releases!

This might sound crazy, but go with me for a minute.

With the advent (and proliferation) of the internet, it's a lot easier for people to communicate. It used to take days/weeks/dog years for companies to get information about a new product to potential customers. But now it can be on a website in a matter of seconds. Two clicks and a dozen keystrokes and you're poised to view all manner of content from any brand you can think of.

Wild, huh?!

With so much info available to so many people at all times, the ways businesses interact with the public is changing. Social media is the new black: it looks good on everyone and can be as formal or as casual as the situation requires.

Which is cool....except it totally changes the way most companies are interacting with the public. Banner ads and press releases are no longer the communications vehicles du jour. In many cases, customer service is the marketing and knowing who and when to engage online is as mission critical as an effective business model.

At yesterday's IABC morning session, this was the topic up for discussion. Rob McMurtrie (resident measurement guru) and Brad McCormick (Austin-based social media nerd) shared some guidelines and some pitfalls to avoid when interacting with customers online.

Stay tuned for the full content of their presentation and the reaction from local business communicators!

Oh no you didn't!

This is the response of jilted ex-girlfriends, former roommates, ex-employees and others who have suffered the indignity of being "unfriended". With so much of our lives and personal relationships taking place online, the "unfriending" is almost as hurtful as the break-up...sometimes moreso, thanks to its passive-aggressiveness.

And yes, "unfriend" is the correct term for that action, at least according to the AP, which has expanded its style guide to include 42 new rules for social media. Among the new rules are the change from "Web site" to "website" as the proper reference for an online destination and asserting that "fan", "friend" and "follow" can be used both as nouns and as verbs.

If your sore thumbs and reflex-like full body twitch toward your "smart phone" (which is now officially two words, rather than a compound word) every time you hear something funny didnt clue you in, it's now official: social media is here to stay.

Check out the new 2010 AP Stylebook for the new rules as well as explanations of acronyms and jargon that have popped up with the proliferation of social media. And learn that "POS" no longer has anything to do with your 1986 Buick Le Sabre, with the drooping ceiling, duct taped door panels and trunk that latches with a bungee cord.

Hump Day Headline

Yeilding for Grammar

Sparks, NV is now making a habit of misspelling its roadway signage. During highway-expansion construction, new signs were added, asking drivers to "yeild" to bikes, a mere 24 months after the same town warned drivers they were entering a "scool" zone.

Granted, the English language is challenging and sometimes words are hard to spell. But has proper spelling and grammar gone completely out the window? And does it matter? A "yeild to bikes" sign still communicates the intended message....

With many studies now indicating the the human brain recognizes words that are close in spelling, is accurate spelling as imperative? As communications professionals, what happens when the standard for proper spelling and grammar becomes permeable?

Discuss in the comments. And be careful when driving in Sparks!

Has bacon jumped the shark?

I think it has. Well, not so much bacon itself (as bacon is and forever will be known as delicious and as such can not jump the shark), but the love of bacon. Or the proliferation of bacon into unexpected and unusual arenas. Like coffee.

I havent tried Torani's bacon-flavored syrup for coffee, but I have to agree with Joel Johnson that maybe that's taking it too far. For many years, bacon and coffee have shared a rather intimate relationship, being key components of breakfast. They are really the pillars of the meal, with eggs, toast, cream and sugar playing supporting roles. Was the span of table between mug and plate too far? Is that why we needed bacon-flavored coffee syrup? I don't know what led to this, but I know one thing: it's gone too far.

Let's briefly recap the path by which we've arrived at this point:

There was Bacon Salt, a meat-free flavoring used in adding a light salty, porky touch to a variety of foods, which was a great idea! Meant that I could add the flavor of salted meat to green beans without actually having to defile my stove top with bacon grease. Then there was Baconnaise, a bacon-flavored mayonnaise...delicious in theory; delicious in practice. It's a bit on the salty side, so I cut it with regular mayo for most uses, to balance out.

But from there, it got ridiculous: bacon chocolate, bacon lollipops, bacon ice cream... And it didnt stop with food! There is the bacon wallet, gummy bacon, bacon t-shirts, and that's not even counting the weird stuff (like bacon underwear) and the internet memes (like this one) and....you get the idea; you've seen them.

I think what's really driving bacon toward its inevitable burn-out is that each new iteration (or exploitation, depending on your viewpoint) is trumpeted. Loudly. And people are jumping on the bacon wagon like hogs running for slop. And I'm over it.

Here's the thing: as a consumer, if you keep yelling something at me, eventually my ears are going to hurt. I'm going to get tired of hearing about bacon and start rolling my eyes at each new form it takes. The item (or food) that I loved originally is now tainted. And no one wants to eat tainted bacon.

So let's hope that bacon-flavored coffee syrup is the last straw and in a few months, bacon will return to the simple life it longs for.